LOL katy, that same headline nearly 3 years old is as if it’s come straight out of the oven 😆 There’s even older ones and statements made 6 years ago that were totally wrong then, just hope no-one fell for them, they’d be out of pocket now 🙄

who cares if the prices have hit the bottom????? sales in most coastal areas are only 20% off the boom times!!!! – if you remove the flippers 😆 😆 😆 and the naive 🙁 🙁 who bought off plan from their fellow country men it is clear the sales numbers are pretty constant.

Further falls in prices (not likely in the better areas!!) would only fuel an increase in sales and subsequent price rises 🙂 . Agents are opening offices like never before; which could be just wishful thinking but the market is not in the doldrums.

Now has never been a better time to bag a bargain – check out the juicy props on this website just for starters!!! 😀 😀 – I was in the notary a few days ago and without a lie there were 15 “sales” being signed that morning – it was like the closing of the Nasdaq on a great day!!

Spain’s housing market is unlikely to find a bottom anytime soon, and for a number of reasons. The principal one of these is that there is no market for the new houses already in stock with the large banks and developers (who really knows how many there are of these at this point). There were 10,226 new houses sold in April a rise of 5.1% over a year earlier. In the first four months of the year sales have risen by 7.8% over the respective 2012 level. But if we take 1 million unsold units (including half built properties etc) as a good working estimate, it would take 100 months (or till the end of the decade) just to clear the stock at this rate.

The small uptick in sales is surely due to the banks offering properties for sale at more “realistic” prices, but there is a good deal more to be done on this front. According to a report by ratings agency Fitch yesterday,

“Procedentes de la Reestructuracion Bancaria S.A., (which is managing assets transferred [to bad bank SAREB] from Spain’s largest nationalised lenders) said last week it had closed sales of 550 homes in three months from late February…… …Nevertheless, the rate of actual sales will have to be accelerated for SAREB to meet its target of selling 42,500 homes in the next five years given its 15-year deadline to liquidate the portfolio (SAREB’s portfolio includes over 55,000 homes).”

Such sales are a drop in the ocean. If they aren’t careful banks will be recovering more properties from repossession than they are selling through the bad bank. Part of the problem with Sareb is who gives the mortgage financing, and part is the fact that it isn’t in the interest of the banking sector generally to reduce prices too quickly. Fitch put it like this:

“However, SAREB and the banks will want to find the right balance between speeding up the pace of asset sales and causing prices to fall, and it does not appear to be in the interest of either to trigger additional sharp property price declines by an overly aggressive sales approach. SAREB has a 15% annual return on equity target and its majority shareholders are the banks that it will compete with as a seller in the residential property market. It is not clear how long it will take SAREB to dispose of its property portfolio.”

UBEDA or Paul, care to qualify your statement ‘agents are opening offices like never before’ ? Are you meaning even more agents opening than in the last mis-selling boom? I do know Viva have opened or merged a few offices with others!

Also, qualify your statement ‘now has never been a better time to bag a bargain’, as far as we’re aware, many economists predict further price falls, housing stock has risen considerably, 100’s of resales on TW sites (and others) competing with new TW developments. Convince Brits that ‘now has never been a better time to bag a bargain’, hello, are you aware Sterling fell 25% against the Euro since the boom, so not the bargains you crack on about, are you involved in selling Spanish property??? 🙄

Spain is already recovering – growth is predicted for quarter 3 onwards. And we’re already seeing larger than average downturns in the unemployment figure, sorely needed. What has changed? It’s not just the big companies (eg Airbus, Amazon, Ford, Volkswagen, Nissan etc) expanding and taking on staff in Spain. Nor is it just the huge percentage increase in tourists from places like Norway and Russia. Nor is it the huge rise in eCommerce and IT startups (take a look at how companies like Fon, Gowex, Akamon and SocialPoint are raking in international contracts). Nor is it even just the Spanish companies expanding at home and abroad (Zara, Lizarran,Mercadona, mango etc.) Nor is it even that Spain is in a position to benefit from tourists put off by events in Turkey and the Middle East.. What underlies all this, is that the western world generally is coming out of recession. Even the UK I believe. A rising tide lifts all ships.. If you still don’t believe things are improving, how come 15,000 tickets were sold on the first day of trading of the new high speed rail link between Madrid and Alicante? The vast majority of those sales would have been to Spanish people – able and willing to pay 70-80 euros for a return to Alicante http://www.tumbit.com/news/articles/7499-renfe-sells-over-15000-ave-alicante-tickets-in-one-day.html

I agree that house prices will remain low for a while yet (outside the usual hotspots). Which is a good thing for the economy. The question is when they do start to rise, will it be gentle or another bubble?

Marcos, there are so many contradictory stories about Spain’s growth or no growth it’s difficult to know what to believe sometimes, but today’s article from The Olive Press has news about transport including prospects for trains 🙄 😉

who cares if the prices have hit the bottom????? sales in most coastal areas are only 20% off the boom times!!!! – if you remove the flippers 😆 😆 😆 and the naive 🙁 🙁 who bought off plan from their fellow country men it is clear the sales numbers are pretty constant.

Further falls in prices (not likely in the better areas!!) would only fuel an increase in sales and subsequent price rises 🙂 . Agents are opening offices like never before; which could be just wishful thinking but the market is not in the doldrums.

Now has never been a better time to bag a bargain – check out the juicy props on this website just for starters!!! 😀 😀 – I was in the notary a few days ago and without a lie there were 15 “sales” being signed that morning – it was like the closing of the Nasdaq on a great day!!

Forgive me for interrupting your debate with katy, Marcos, but in the interests of the word ‘count’, you said katy had made 4,5337 posts which in itself doesn’t make sense with the comma etc, I think you meant katy had made 4537 posts at that time 🙄

Forgive me for interrupting your debate with katy, Marcos, but in the interests of the word ‘count’, you said katy had made 4,5337 posts which in itself doesn’t make sense with the comma etc, I think you meant katy had made 4537 posts at that time 🙄

Well spotted Angie – corrected! Still my point stands – why is someone who’s made over 4,000 posts on this board alone, criticising another poster for spending too much time on the web??? Pot meets kettle, springs to mind.

What underlies all this, is that the western world generally is coming out of recession. Even the UK I believe. A rising tide lifts all ships.. If you still don’t believe things are improving, how come 15,000 tickets were sold on the first day of trading of the new high speed rail link between Madrid and Alicante? The vast majority of those sales would have been to Spanish people – able and willing to pay 70-80 euros for a return to Alicante http://www.tumbit.com/news/articles/7499-renfe-sells-over-15000-ave-alicante-tickets-in-one-day.html I agree that house prices will remain low for a while yet (outside the usual hotspots). Which is a good thing for the economy. The question is when they do start to rise, will it be gentle or another bubble?

Hmmm. From another forum

A one-track dirt road used by local farmers is the main access to a magnificent glass-and-steel train station in the small city of Villena, on Spain’s latest high-speed rail route.

It is a spanking new 4,500sq m building – essentially in the middle of nowhere.

The central government financed the rail route, inaugurated yesterday, between Madrid and Alicante on the Costa Blanca. The Valencia regional government was supposed to fund works to connect it to the nearby motorway and Villena, home to 35,000.

But it ran out of money, leaving the station high and dry.

The disconnect says a lot about both Spain and its current finances, about a love affair with grand projects to showcase its modernity and a diminishing ability to pay for them.

The Valencia government has pledged to complete the works but it is now unclear when and where it will be able to find the funds as it is already cutting spending on schools and hospitals as it tries to reduce a deficit.

Ximo Puig, the head of the Socialist opposition in Valencia, says the station is likely to become yet another white elephant in a country where dozens of airports, train stations, motorways or cultural centres built during a decade-long property boom are under-used or have been abandoned.

On many routes, Spanish cities lack the critical size to make the system sustainable, partly explaining why the state-owned Renfe train operator and Adif station and rail company are losing money.

Renfe has a 5bn-euro debt while Adif, rated as junk by Moody’s investors service, has debt of more than 11bn euros.

But on board the opening train and at the unfinished stations along the route, there was little enthusiasm.

In Alicante, about 200 people staged a demonstration against the new infrastructure and no more than 50 people welcome the new train at the Villena station.”

“Another WHITE ELEPHANT”

“RENFE with 5 BILLION DEBT”

“ADIF rated as JUNK with 11 BILLION PLUS DEBT”

Valencian Govt cutting spending on Hospitals and Schools to try and fund the train station connection in the middle of Nowhere.

The AVE extension will allow Alicante to receive 2.25 million visitors a year, a 40-percent increase, which represents 70 million euros in tourism revenue. Already 70,000 tickets have been sold in one week for the new link. Great news for tourism, and will no doubt allow for greater number of house buyers in the region – in 2012 alone Madrilenos bought up over 4300 properties!

Proceed with caution newbies if thinking of buying in Spain, and don’t look for quick profits if you do buy 😉 There’s a ‘lora lora’ choice and watch exchange rates and understand the high transaction costs involved and make lower offers than advertised 😉 Remember ‘information can be powerful if from trusted sources’ 😉 8)

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